Summerset Camp & The 5 Beaches ~

Monday, 7 September 2015

Summerset Camp & The 5 Beaches

03:15

Lance Dean

We got packed up early morning, headed off towards Somerset and the 5 Beaches track. After a fair drive I realized we were lost, we had taken a wrong turn somewhere which didn't make much sense because the road was such good quality, thats why I kept going and didn't notice it was the wrong way

Summerset beach

At the end of the road we came to a nice sandy beach but it was bordered by mangroves, so we thought, drive down the beach to the end of mangroves for a look, swim, and maybe a fish. We didn't get very far along the sand, turns out it was a special large grain sinkey sand, let the big knobley tyres down to 20psi and drove a little bit further but it bogged down again, since theres such big tides up here and they come at weird intervals and the fact we were lost with no one else around or likely to turn up, we decided to turn around. Got the recovery tracks, & shovel out and started digging, this took a while, everytime I tried to move it would sink in but eventually we got the beast turned around. Now get down low and go go go! Give it heaps and don't stop, sand flying everywhere stuff flying everywhere in the back we made it back to the hard track. Glad we didn't try go further.
Now back along the wrong track to the missed turn, seemed like even longer on the way back, hopefully it's the right way this time.

The deserted beach where we got lost & bogged

We found the missed turn and carried on along the right track which was similar condition to the wrong track, made it to Somerset Beach for lunch. looks like a perfect free camp, I think it's an abandoned National Park camp, probably Aboriginal land like the resort at the Cape.

Summerset beach, it actually looks like this.

Perfect shelterd beach, lined with coconuts, behind an island which has a resort on it, this and the Summerset ruins on the hill were the first settlement, cattle farm and stop over for passing ships in Cape York, there's nothing here now but you can see why the ship's would anchor here in the sheltered chanel between the islands. Apparently the settlement was originally on the island, but was moved to the mainland, I would of left it on the island, it might still be there now.

Looking south along summerset beach

The cave and rock art at summerset

The coast track to the 5 beaches

After lunch we walked left along the beach and the jaggard ironstone rocks on little more than a roumer, no map, no signs, should of worn my work boots for these sharp rocks, but we found the Summerset Cave paintings. In a sandstone looking cave right on the hightide mark. Surprisingly there was a lot of good condition paintings, I thought the waves and sea spray would wash them off. We sat there in the cave entrance for awhile soaking in the atmosphere then headed back along the rocks to the truck. Lucky the tide hadn't come in much.

We did a quick walk around Summerset ruins which was a old tin shed on what looked like much older stone foundations, and a small cemetery.
On along the track to the 5 beaches. It was a very nice drive over small headlands then along nice beaches, but Bloody windy, tried to fish off the headlands, nice deep blue water, in a sheltered place, looked great if the wind would stop, no fish, gave up on that idea.

We started back along the track to Bamaga and stopped at the Cape York souvenir shop, the croc tent, they had a few crocs in a cage out front, hopefully we get to see a real one. We both brought a singlet each and carried on back to Bamaga and snuck into the campgrounds shower block, and had a quick fish at the warf while we were there, then back to the batch late, 2 trevelly, fish for tea again, yum, not bad for a day trip.